Local Thrift Store Chock Full of Cheap Combloc Gear

I live in rural North Georgia and I enjoy browsing the local roadside thrift stores here. They seem to pop up and then just disappear. Yesterday I stopped in a new one that I had never been to. To my surprise, the place had a surprisingly large selection of combloc surplus gear. Most of the stuff I was familiar with and had seen before. A few things I had never seen. Nearly all of it was very reasonably priced with the exception of one item I'll mention later in this post. Sorry for the lack of pics but I had left my phone in the car and didn't want to retrieve it and then start snapping photos of everything and arouse the owners suspicion, only to return later and see that he had marked up the prices on all the stuff LOL. Anyway ----------

There was a lot of East German stuff with the rain pattern camo. All looked brand new. They had a few of the rain pattern backpacks with the gray nylon straps but I didn't see the price on them. There were EG canteen sets that included the canteen, camo button-up cover, and cup. Also had rain pattern camo 4-cell AK mag pouches, the gray nylon belts with the gray painted EG hammer/compass buckles, those green nylon EG web belts that have the buckle and attachment places based on the British Pattern 58 web gear, and some small 3-cell pouches (for grenades maybe?) that hooked to that particular belt. Also had a bunch of those gray field caps with the two buttons on the front. Those had the metal EG cap badges and one had what appeared to be a crossed cavalry swords badge. There were two EG rain pattern camo field jackets or smocks. I had never seen these particular ones before. They looked like they had a reversible white snow camo pattern on the inside. I ended up buying a rain pattern EG vest. Not sure if it started out its life as a vest or if someone had cut the sleeves off it. It has a bunch of different sized pockets and two metal D-rings near the shoulders. I'll post some pics of it later.

There were a bunch of what appeared to be old Soviet military BDU tops. The color was like a sandy brown. They all had a row of big shiny gold buttons running down the front with a star and the hammer/sickle. Most had the familiar purple ink stamp on the inside in Cyrillic and a couple were dated 1971.

All the stuff I listed above was priced very reasonably. So reasonably in fact, I'm probably going to go back tomorrow and buy everything that's left for resale. The stuff is priced so low that I could flip it all at very low prices - lower than anything you could find on the internet - and still make a dollar or two.

There was one item that was priced a lot higher than all the other stuff, though. There were about four of these particular items. I have never seen these before in all my days of shopping for surplus stuff or watching hours of footage of world conflict. These appeared to be 8-piece Bulgarian webbing sets. They were all brand new and had a piece of paper attached to them with stuff written in Bulgarian describing the contents of the set. They looked a lot like the British Pattern 58 webbing and all the pouches had those "pull tabs" to open them up. The belt, H-Strap suspenders, and pouches were all dark green canvas material. Looked like there was one 4-cell mag pouch. Does anyone here know what weapon this Bulgarian webbing was designed for? AK-74, maybe? If they were made for a AK-74 and the mag pouch will fit 5.45 mags I might just get one. They look cool as hell and they can't be too common. I just wish they weren't $60. Everything else was is so cheap I feel weird paying that much for the rig.

I don't think the reversible jacket is Czech, but I could be wrong. The reason why I say this is that the "snow camo" on the inside looked kinda like the old SS pea-dot pattern except it wasn't all over. It looked like it was mostly white with splotches of the pea-dot.

Well, you were correct. It is a Czech jacket and it's not reversible. Apparently that's just what the backside of the camo pattern looks like. It fit me so I bought it. This Euro stuff seems hard to find in the larger sizes I'm 6'2").

Also got 10 East German canteens. Some still have this paper stuff wrapped around the cups. Don't know if that was for sanitary purposes or what. Some of them have a little metal chain that attaches the cap, others have this plastic thing.

Well, you were correct. It is a Czech jacket and it's not reversible. Apparently that's just what the backside of the camo pattern looks like. It fit me so I bought it. This Euro stuff seems hard to find in the larger sizes I'm 6'2").

It is harder to find the Czech jackets like that. The Czech smocks are easier to find.

The green belts are DDR "UTV" pattern belts. As you observed they basically ripped off the British web gear design. DDR was re-equipping their entire army with green UTV at the time the wall came down.

The smaller pouches are UTV grenade pouches. They work well for SKS stripper clipped ammo.

I started buying East German militaria when the wall came down - circa 1990-1991. My German ancestors came from an area that eventually ended up being East Germany. Local gun show vendor got me hooked - his wife was Hungarian and he was always importing cool stuff.

I am continually amazed that there is still oodles of East German militaria on the market, but some things are beginning to dry up.

Well, I have to go back again today and get one of their EG combat packs they had for sale there. Getting ready to head out the door now. I was unaware that the pack straps also double as suspenders for the gray belt and other LBE. I just want one semi-complete EG LBE set out of all this (mag pouch, belt, canteen, suspenders, backpack). The rest of this stuff I am probably going to sell super cheap on the forum MP.

Unfortunately there are a lot of East German repo items being made. Don't think any of this is, just have to keep an eye out.

Good find on the Czech camo. Local shop here in St Louis had some, marked down dirt cheap Not my thing but I've known the owners for decades. Informed them they could mark it up a bit and still sell it pretty quickly. No use in giving it away